Two of my favourite English TV shows are Foyle’s War and George Gently. Both have seaside connections, the first with the Sussex Coast – all busy and pebbled – the second with the rather bleak, windswept and extensive sandy beaches of the North East of England.
In three years at university in Durham, the beaches of the North East remained completely unknown to me.
In more recent tv viewing George Gently has become conflated in my mind with the principled but unlikely Judge John Deed – both of them wonderfully portrayed by Martin Shaw.
I’ve always thought that Michael Kitchen does the best close up ‘face work’ on television: so nuanced and expressive, with minimalist twitches and other small facial movements. Foyle also has the best and nicest tv driver, played by Honeysuckle Weeks.
Imagine, then, my delight when Pella and I discovered that The Best Man, currently showing in the West End, stars both Mr Shaw and Ms Weeks. We hastened to the Playhouse to see them portraying a 1960 struggle for democratic Presidential candidature between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, both (no spoiler alert is required, I think) seeking support for their nomination from a previous President.
After the show we joined 5 others in stalking Martin Shaw, with a bare majority of the 7 being Australian. Ms Weeks made her way out of the gated basement before Mr Shaw, and I now believe that it must have been shyness caused by a frisson of a sort of admiration not felt for Mr Shaw, that explains why we (I) let her pass with no more than congratulations: no molestation for photograph or conversation.
Martin Shaw did not get off so lightly.
